1976 Republican National Convention

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The 1976 National Convention of the Republican Party of the United States met at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, from August 16 to August 19, 1976. The convention nominated incumbent Gerald Ford for President, but only after narrowly defeating a strong challenge from former California governor Ronald Reagan. The convention also nominated Kansas Senator Robert J. Dole for Vice President, replacing the incumbent V.P., former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The keynote address was delivered by Tennessee Senator Howard Baker.

Although Ford had won more primary delegates than Reagan, he did not have enough to secure the nomination, and both candidates arrived at the convention early to campaign for additional support. Here Reagan benefited from his highly committed delegates, notably "Reagan's Raiders" of the Texas delegation. They and other conservative Western and Southern delegates particularly faulted the Ford Administration's foreign policy of détente towards the Soviet Union, criticizing his signing of the Helsinki Accords and indirectly blaming him for the April 1975 Fall of Saigon.

The conservatives succeeded in inserting several key planks into the party platform. Reagan and North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms successfully had a "moral foreign policy" plank inserted. In light of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the 1976 Republican platform became the first to advocate a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. They next sought a rules change which would have required candidates to identify their running mate before the start of balloting.

Reagan had promised, if nominated, to name liberal Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate, in a bid to attract liberals and centrists in the party. Ironically, the very conservative Sen. Helms objected that Schweiker was far too liberal, and promptly began a movement to draft Sen. James L. Buckley of New York as the presidential nominee, in an effort to head off a possible Reagan victory. The rules change was defeated, however, and the "Draft Buckley" movement was mooted when Ford went on to win the nomination, by 1187 votes to 1070 votes (and one for Elliot L. Richardson.

Reagan endorsed Ford after his concession, and was permitted to address the convention. His speech was so good, that many,it is said, left the convention thinking that they voted for the wrong man.

Ford selected Kansas Senator Robert J. Dole as his running-mate in preference to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller; Rockefeller had announced that he did not wish to be a candidate for Vice President in 1976 the previous fall, in no small part because it was believed that Rockefeller was too far to the left to be acceptable to the G.O.P. base. (A 2004 PBS Frontline documentary titled "Rumsfeld's War" suggests that the cabinet shake-up and the eclipse of Rockefeller had been engineered in October 1975 by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.)